Why doesn’t anyone care?

NEW YORK — China takes over Hong Kong today. It may take over the world tomorrow.

Very few people in the West seem to be worried about China’s plans for expansion — be they economic or geographic. Even in Hong Kong, most people seem gleefully optimistic that no significant changes will result from the takeover of the territory.

For those of us who are concerned about the future role of China in the world, not to mention its current treatment of more than 1 billion people, this disinterest is hard to figure. After all, think of a major nation whose society has been more repressed and more controlled by a central totalitarian government than modern-day China? It strains one’s imaginative powers — at least if you have a realistic understanding of what Chinese Communists have done to their people over the last half century and what they continue to do today.

Think about it. Name one country in the history of the world that has had more control over its people and used that control for greater evil? If you know what is happening in China today, it’s not an easy question to answer. What am I talking about?

• China forces political prisoners to perform slave labor in camps very similar to the Soviet gulags.

• China recently ordered the closure of 300 newspapers across the country. These weren’t independent papers critical of the government. There is no such thing in China. These were official, government-censored public relations organs that just didn’t go far enough in touting the party line.

• Perhaps more than any other country in the world, China systematically persecutes people — especially Christians — for their religious beliefs and practices.

To top it all off, China is rapidly developing its military power and modernizing the world’s largest standing army. It has nuclear weapons targeted on U.S. cities and has threatened to use them. It also threatens to invade Taiwan.

But perhaps the most revolting thing about China is its callous disregard for the lives of its own people. Start with the father of the Chinese revolution — Mao Zedong. Historians believe he may have more blood on his hands than Hitler or Stalin. Perhaps 30 million perished under its brutality.

Numbers are always tricky business in China. For instance, even today, some experts believe there may be 100 million “unofficial” Chinese — meaning, they don’t officially exist, but are, nevertheless, real living, breathing human beings.

So who are these people? They’re children of parents who dared to have more than one offspring. Instead of aborting the babies or killing the infants as millions of their countrymen have done in the last generation, they chose a risky brand of defiance — the children’s underground. If the estimates are even close to being right about the extent of this underground sub-culture, it would represent a population the size of Mexico.

Why aren’t Americans more concerned? Why do they yawn when they hear about votes on most-favored-nation status for China? Why do they not have a worry in the world about the future of Hong Kong?

The answer came to me when I was reading the inside pages of a local New York area paper yesterday. This little, non-descript, four-inch, back-of-the-book squib also explained to me why no one cares about other scandals closer to home — such as the shocking revelations about foreign powers — like China — trying to buy influence in American government through illegal political contributions. What was this story?

“John Huang — a central figure in the investigation of presidential campaign fund-raising — expressed interest in getting secret intelligence about China, says the CIA official who briefed Huang 37 times.

“In testimony released Friday in a lawsuit, CIA officer John Dickerson said he also gave CIA headquarters reports on the reaction Huang and other Commerce Department officials had to his briefings.

“The Justice Department and congressional investigators are investigating whether Huang fed secret intelligence information to his Indonesia-based former employer, which has extensive business dealings with China. Huang has denied any wrongdoing.”

No big revelations. After all, we know Huang received more than 100 such briefings in all. But just one more piece of the puzzle that grows increasingly to look like someone was selling out America to the highest bidder — China. So, why doesn’t anyone care? Because where do you find these stories in the newspapers?

Typically it’s where I found this one — buried under an unassuming standing headline reading “Campaign Finance.”

Campaign finance? Wouldn’t a more appropriate title be “Treason”?